Advice on acrylic tools and paints wanted

Hi, and welcome. I know it sounds tedious but you might want to try making up a few swatches. If you have lemon yellow as one of the colours you bought mix a bit of black into it and see what happens (that's an olive green) try mixing a bit of blue into yellow ( that will be a lighter green) but by mixing different combinations and putting a square of it on paper with the colours you used written underneath you may discover something and have a reference if you need it again. I am not familar with Janet Bells work but they look nice and bright, she has probably applied the paint thinly so you get the white coming through from underneath. When you use paints that can be seen through it can have some issues (you need to get it right since corrections can look messy) but it creates an brightness. Having said that acrylic is a medium that brightness of colour shouldn't really be an issue with, the colours can be very strong.

I don't know, but suspect she uses flow formula or other liquid acrylics, rather than the heavy duty paint. There are many more liquid acrylics - try System 3 from Daler-Rowney, or Chromacolour (which I believe are only available online, from Chromacolour UK). Using water or a medium will help a bit even with the heavy colours, but it'll be a struggle. Greens are difficult to mix without an understanding of colour mixing, and that doesn't come overnight. In the meantime, use a Sap Green or Chromium Oxide Green straight from the tube or pot, mixed with yellows, blues, reds - experiment - to get something like the colours you want. But if you'd rather mix greens from the basics (which does give a livelier result) try green-inclining blues, like cerulean, cobalt, or pthalo (VERY strong) with Lemon Yellow - then try the same with Cadmium Yellow and notice the difference. Ultramarine in a mix can give some very dirty greens, because it's inclined towards purple - but sometimes you might WANT a dirty green. Experiment with mixes on odd bits of paper. And don't forget, there are browns, reds, purples, even black, in grass; together with bare patches, rocks, odd bits of fallen wood. As for your first landscape - well, it's a good start: but that triangle of colours on the bottom right is too vibrant and jumps out: nor is it obvious what kinds of flowers they are - the artist whose work you've shown beneath yours has looked at actual flowers in the landscape and someone with a keener botanical eye than mine could identify all of them. My suggestion to you is, by all means admire the work of other artists and be inspired by it, but don't labour to reproduce their results, which they've probably spent decades developing: you set yourself up for disappointment. Go out and LOOK, then paint what you see. Finally .... well, for now! ..... brushes. Avoid sables, because acrylic kills them. Synthetic brushes are normally best for acrylics - I get mine from Rosemary & Co normally (again, online) or from the Daler Rowney Dalon series, or Winsor & Newton's Sceptre Gold, or even their Cotman range of synthetics - which is actually excellent. You can use hog-hair, especially with the heavier paint, but I wouldn't if I were starting out again - nothing worse than a damp hog-hair brush clogged with paint and delivering horrible gobbets all over your canvas (or paper).

PS - just saw Daveyboyz's post, and agree - do try the colour swatches.